Saturday, June 18, 2016

NORFOLK, Virginia -- Norfolk State University spent years in chaos – financial, administrative, academic – that only began to substantively clear with the hiring of President Eddie Moore Jr.

On Thursday, the school found out that its sports teams were also victims of the administrative mayhem.

“Norfolk State’s athletic department has been placed on two years’ probation and will have a total of 97 wins – including its 2011 MEAC football championship – vacated across six sports because of athlete certification violations,” wrote Pilot sportswriter David Hall.

The penalties, announced by the NCAA and the school, appear to stem from the same kind of missing administrative oversight that helped imperil the school’s accreditation, beginning in 2013.

Last December, after two years of corrective work by Moore and a new team across multiple areas of the university, NSU’s accreditation was restored.

The violation at NSU wasn’t the kind of severe transgression that carries long-term penalties or postseason bans; indeed, the school’s institutional confession and its own efforts to reform have earned administrators an invitation to teach other colleges how to avoid similar mistakes.